Category: Uncategorized

I was talking to another parent the other day and thinking about how even small goals and priorities change with time.

When my daughter was a brand-new baby, my number one goal was just to keep her in clean bibs (spitty baby.) I’d go buy bibs in bulk and find the right size—big enough to keep her from ruining her smoked dresses, but not so big that you couldn’t see the smocking (this was also around the time that I started writing my first book. I think the bibs started boring me. :) )

Shortly afterward, my number one goal was to keep my toddling daughter from losing her lovey, Dirty Baby. Losing Dirty Baby was a complete and utter nightmare. I would do anything to keep from losing that dolly. The child couldn’t sleep, eat, or do anything but wail unless Dirty Baby was in her arms. I ended up buying another baby doll just like that one and dirtying it up myself just in case we had a catastrophe and needed a substitute. I tell you, I was obsessed with Dirty Baby’s well-being.

Then there was my ongoing attempt to get rid of my daughter’s pacifier. She and I ended up sending the pacifiers up to the Guh-guh fairy up in the sky. (Yes. I tied several pacifiers onto a huge bunch of balloons and sent them up into space so that the Guh-guh fairy could redistribute them to babies who still needed binkies.

As my daughter grew older and went to elementary school, obviously, my goals and priorities changed and became broader and less focused on the day-to-day. And I became a bit more focused on me and what I wanted to do since I had a little extra time. That’s when I started pouring more focused energy into my writing.

As I look at the last nine years, I can see tremendous change in my personal priorities.

What about our characters? It’s important to know what our characters want…we hear a lot about that. But what about character growth that causes changes in characters’ goals? As we get older, we experience change (jobs, finances, marriage, divorce, children, empty nests, etc.), and our wants, needs, priorities, and goals change.

Sometimes our goals and priorities can change rapidly in response to an abrupt change of circumstances; a catastrophic financial burden like a family member’s expensive medical problem, a grown child who moves back home, an aging parent, etc.

Obviously, this can also bring conflict or even changes in a character’s outlook on life. Think about the main character in the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. His priority was always to go off and see the world—until reality in the form of various family and community responsibilities forced him on a different track. So you could even have the character’s dream and the character’s reality be in conflict with each other.

Do you know what your character wants? Has what your character wants changed at all, or could it?

************************

Also—I have an announcement to make. :) I just signed a contract for a new, three-book mystery series with Penguin’s NAL imprint under my own name. The series is set in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina and the first book (which I’m currently writing) involves a murder that affects members of a quilting guild in the small town of Dappled Hills. Thanks to Penguin and to my agent, Ellen Pepus, for the opportunity!

I’ve gotten enough emails and DMs on Twitter that I thought I should probably run a short post answering some questions about submitting posts for the search engine, etc.

First of all, thanks so much to everyone for their support! Mike Fleming and I have been really overwhelmed by the blog posts, the tweets, the Facebooking, and the encouragement. Thanks so much to everyone!

The content for the search engine is coming from the links that I’ve tweeted. Each week, new links will be added to the engine from the posts I’ve tweeted from the previous week. So basically, Twitterific is going into the search engine.

I’ve had quite a few questions from writers on how to get their content added to the search engine. I’m usually looking for craft-related, industry-related, social media, promo-related, or writing inspiration posts. I love posts that are easily skimmed (as opposed to a block of text–most writers are working with short amounts of time), have great content, and can be helpful to many writers.

I’m scanning over 1500 blogs…and it’s easy for me to miss a great post. I’m trying to spend only an hour a day reading posts, so I’m reading them very quickly. What’s most likely to make me accidentally skim over a wonderful post is a misleading title, an intro that doesn’t relate to the rest of the post, or a truncated post in my Reader (the whole post doesn’t show up in my Reader and I have to click “read more”…leaving my Reader and opening another window to do so.)

Have you got a great post on the writing craft—even something in your archives? Feel free to email me at elizabethspanncraig (at) gmail (dot) com or to shoot me a DM on Twitter (@elizabethscraig). Not sure your blog is in my Reader? Please send me a link and I’ll add it.

Thanks so much again, everyone, for the amount of support you’ve given us and the ideas you’ve had for the search engine. We’re hoping it’ll be a tool that’s a quick, easy way to connect with resources. And please let me know in the comments or by email, Twitter, or Facebook (Elizabeth Spann Craig, Author.)

Living in suburban Charlotte, NC, I don’t meet a wildly different array of people in my usual, everyday life. Everyone is, of course, different from each other (different talents, different personalities, etc.). But we’ve all got more in common with each other than not.

Most of the people that I see on a day to day basis are other parents. We interact with each other through our children’s activities. Some go to work, some volunteer. We go to book club, out to dinner, to church, or to the movies. We visit while waiting to pick up our kids from Scouts, art class, or drama. We tidy our homes and do yard work.

There are slight variations on the same theme.

And then I went to the guitar store.

The guitar store visit was necessitated by my son’s interest in taking lessons. My husband has an 1980s-era Kramer electric guitar,which he’d already stopped playing by the time I met him in college.

So we walk in, holding the (very old) guitar case. And I have a feeling we looked just as exotic to the tattooed, pierced, black-tee-shirted people in the guitar store as they looked to us.

“Wow,” my husband said. “We’re old. And boring!”

I agreed with him.

“Well, let’s drop off the guitar with the repair guy and leave,” he said.

But I was more interested in hanging out and watching these folks for a while. They were so different. And different is always good when I’m collecting character traits and mannerisms.

I don’t think my husband was as thrilled at hanging out in the guitar store as I was. “You’ve got rock musicians in your next mystery?” he asked with some degree of surprise.

No, I definitely didn’t. But that’s the nice thing about creating characters—you can take little bits and pieces of people and meld them together to create a new person. It sounds a little Frankensteinish, but it works well. It does help, though, to see some different kinds of people from time to time.

Unfortunately, the guitar store made staring at people difficult. There wasn’t a café area where I could watch them and listen to them without being too obvious. I lingered as long as I could before we finally left.

Even if I don’t use the people I’ve seen, the experience tends to inspire me. It gets my neurons firing to see all the different possibilities of character appearance and personality and dress and manner.

I haven’t done any really good people-watching for a while and I think my well is running dry. Starbucks isn’t doing it for me (more of the same suburban types.)

Does people-watching help you add a little color to your characters? And—where has the watching been good, lately?

There’s always an active discussion somewhere—writing forums, comments on blogs, conversations on Yahoo groups—about the different types of promo for writers and what works best.

I think the reason why the discussion is so lively is that not everything works for everyone.

I’ve been asked a lot recently, though, about what’s worked for me with book marketing. In fact, I’m going to be speaking at a panel this weekend on the topic at the Cape Fear Crime Festival.

For the record, here are the different things I’ve tried and how I thought it worked:

Book Tour: I actually enjoyed this, despite the focus on public appearances. I think the reason I enjoyed it is because I was touring with several other authors…and staying with Molly Weston, who was very hospitable and fascinating—she’s organized tours for tons of authors. Ordinarily, though, this is the most expensive form of promo and unless you have a pro like Molly organizing it…it could be a flop.

Bookstore visits: My least favorite. I’m usually asked a lot where the restroom is or where the travel section of the store is. I would recommend putting candy and small giveaways on your table—and smiling a lot. You might want to have a nice glass of wine with an understanding friend afterward. :) Or you might love bookstore visits—your mileage may vary.

Social media/branding: You won’t be surprised that this is my favorite, I’m sure. :) It’s free and can reach a wide audience in a variety of ways. It can be subtle instead of pushy. And it provides a way to network as well as to market. On the downside, it will suck up all of your available time if you let it. Most authors like Facebook and blogging best…I also like Twitter.

Blog tour: I love blog tours. You get a chance to interact with a different group of readers, the blog host gets a chance to take a short break, and your book’s hits on Google go up. It’s important to be organized with blog tours—know where you’re supposed to be and confirm it with the host a couple of times. Be sure to check in with comments during the day. You’ll want the tour to be long enough to be noticed, but not so long that blog tour fatigue sets in (for you and your readers.)

Postcards: I’ve done a postcard drive before to bookstores and libraries. I found it fairly expensive, but worthwhile—I checked the before-and-after of my book at libraries (my primary target) on WorldCat and could see the number of libraries carrying my book increase. As far as independent bookstores? I’m just not sure if it worked or not…I couldn’t really get any data on it.

Calls: I’ve made promo calls to bookstores to see if they’re carrying my book and to ask them to carry it, if they didn’t (this was for my smaller publisher…the larger one had covered the bases pretty well.) I’m really not a phone person, so I went off a script after making sure it was a good time to talk to the CRM (community relations manager) at the store. I didn’t enjoy making these calls at all…but I did get my book on the shelves using this method.

Contests: I do a good number of these on the Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen blog. Expense—it’s up to you. You could give away one of your ARCs, an author copy, or something that ties in to your book (I’ve done barbeque related supplies before.) We’ve noticed on the group blog that it’s better to have shorter contests—ones that go on for a week or even just a day seem to do better. You’ll want to make sure you include the cost of shipping in your costs when you’re deciding how much you want to spend. And you’ll also want to decide whether you’ll open up the contest to international readers (which I usually do.)

Bookmarks and business cards: These are really just a must. You’ll want them to give to people who ask about your book, or to put on the promo table at conferences or panels, or to have at your book signing, or to hand out at festivals. I’ve ordered them from different places (Iconix and VistaPrint) and I’ve made them myself using Microsoft Publisher and Office Max. But you’ve really just got to have them. Readers do seem to love them—I get emails from readers who ask for them.

Appearances/panels: It’s definitely harder, as a mom, for me to get to appearances at conferences, festivals, and panels—but I’ll definitely make them if they’re regional and not too expensive for me to get to. I do seem to sell books when I make appearances.

Book clubs: I enjoy talking to book clubs. They’re really going to be one of the most successful venues for writers because of the number of people reading your book…and because they usually provide a receptive audience. The ones I usually get invited to are friends of friends types of events. I’ve enjoyed all the ones I’ve gone to…and I have a couple on my calendar already this year. I know authors who have given away door prizes at these and that seems to go over well. It’s also a nice opportunity to get people on your email newsletter list.

As a reader, I’ve bought books (and continue to) by authors I’ve gotten to know through social media. I’ve bought books when I’ve attended panels and was interested in the authors who spoke at them. I’ve only occasionally purchased a book at a store because I saw an author there (that’s hit or miss…it might be that they’ve written a genre I’m less-interested in reading.) And I’ll admit I’ve not been swayed by postcards, bookmarks, or tours. But that’s just me.

If you’ve got a book out, how are you approaching promo? What’s working for you? If you’re a reader, have you ever purchased a book as a direct result of marketing?

I used to be a pretty good multitasker.

Maybe I was too good and got overconfident. I started juggling even more at a time.

Three times last week, though, I was in a real-time conversation with someone—twice via Twitter and once on the phone and I completely messed up.

The last time I messed up, I was proofing something I’d written (blog post, not my book), talking to my husband (not, I’m sure, very coherently), listening for a weather update on the television so I’d know what the children should wear for school, and messaging a writer on Twitter.

I got a returned DM on Twitter, “Sorry?” the tweeter said. “That link doesn’t relate to our conversation.”

Really? I frowned and looked at it. Sure enough, it was truncated gobbledygook from something else I was working on.

I apologized to the guy I was tweeting saying, “I’m working on 20 things at once.”

He was nice enough not to say, “And doing none of them well.” :) But I bet he was thinking it…and so was I.

I stopped everything I was doing, and focused on the one priority I really had at the moment. And that was the point that my morning started going smoothly.

Some things I can multitask. I can vacuum and write a book in my head. I can cook supper and come up with a blog post. I can exercise and work on plot lines.

Where it seems like it goes haywire for me is 1)when I try to interact with people and do something else simultaneously and 2) when I do more than one thing on the computer at once.

One thing I’ve never done is multitask around my children. They deserve my full attention—besides, kids will call you on it. But everyone else deserves my full attention, too—including my poor husband who has probably gotten completely used to incoherent sentences from me.

So here’s a new resolution for me—one thing at a time, if at all possible. And if I’m having a conversation with you, I’ll pay full attention (that means no writing the book in my head when we’re talking! Even if I think you’d make a nice character for my book.)

Are you a multitasker? How is it working for you? Are there some things you can multitask better than others?